


the dance of chance. a quote lost unquote tale of archy and mehitabel

by JakeWasHere



Category: Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Inspired by Poetry, Pastiche, Poetry, Romances that never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 20:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7728955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JakeWasHere/pseuds/JakeWasHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit of philosophy and sentiment between an unlikely pair of friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dance of chance. a quote lost unquote tale of archy and mehitabel

**Author's Note:**

> Most of you who find this page will know who Archy and Mehitabel are. For those who don't: They are a cockroach and alley cat who first appeared in the newspaper columns of Don Marquis in 1916. Both were, or claimed to be, reincarnated humans; Archy was a free-verse poet in his past life, while Mehitabel professed to have been a long series of aristocratic ladies, leading all the way back to Cleopatra. Archy ostensibly contributed free-verse narratives for Marquis's column while the boss was out of the office; he wrote by diving from the top of the office typewriter onto the keys, one agonizing letter at a time -- and for obvious reasons he couldn't work the shift key (the carriage return was difficult enough). Together, the two painted a rich, bleak, funny tapestry of life in New York City as seen from the underside...

i was sitting here on your  
typewriter just the other day boss  
and mehitabel the cat and i were  
engaging in what for us  
was an uncommonly profound  
disquisition on the  
subject of fickle fate  
  
consider said i  
the dance of chance  
the million different factors  
that had to fall in line  
in order for the two  
of us to have met for the first  
time here in this office  
if the week before we  
first made acquaintance had been  
any different why  
the odds are we might never  
have crossed paths atall  
what a stroke said mehitabel  
of good fortune that  
a born biographer and his subject  
and his machine should have  
been brought into conjunction here  
i hope that between us we may  
provide the universe with a few more  
immortal lyrics before we  
are thru  
  
but is it not  
an injustice said i  
that cleopatra must become  
a common alley cat before  
her most competent  
memoirist may appear on the scene  
and that he should be of  
all things a cussed cockroach  
question mark  
  
mehitabel only laughed  
at this my dear  
archy she said it could  
have happened in no  
other way i indicated  
to her to expound  
further and she went on  
can you imagine the two  
of us ever meeting as human  
beings and doing  
something silly like falling in  
love archy good  
heavens boy the odds against  
would be even greater  
how so i queried  
we would not she replied  
move in the same social circles  
an aristocrat like me  
and a starving artist like you  
think of it the only  
way we could ever meet  
would be if you received  
an invitation to read  
some of your verse libra at  
an opening at the armory  
or some other place guaranteed  
to be stuft to the gills  
with swells and toffs and  
high class society dames such  
as yours truly and all of  
us pretending an interest  
in capital a art  
  
i might have protested but she  
steamrolled it onward  
and you i daresay would  
not have cut a very  
dashing figure from across the room  
what with that little blond mustache  
and receding chin i once  
heard you bemoaning when you  
were thinking too long on your  
last incarnation  
  
your words i said wincing  
are perhaps more cruel than  
strictly necessary but they  
have to them the ring of  
truth had we not been  
cat and cockroach  
we may never have so much as  
noticed one another  
n est ce pas  
  
mais oui mon vieux  
cancrelat said mehitabel  
tis perhaps slightly awkward  
but wotthehell archy  
what matters is that now we do  
know each other we are best  
friends in this life as we could  
not have been in others  
and she smiled i was  
inclined to smile back but  
boss it is hard when one  
occasionally catches one's best  
friend so called  
coming in after a bad  
week of scavenging  
and beginning to look  
at one as though one  
were a fried chicken liver  
or some such  
dainty morsel  
  
archy


End file.
